Interviews

As a community journal, Journal of Cell Science is particularly keen to support the next generation of cell biologists. Here, we present two series of interviews; ‘Cell Scientists To Watch’, with talented researchers who have recently set up their own labs, and ‘First Person’, with the early-career first authors of a selection of papers published in Journal of Cell Science. These researchers talk about their lives in and out of the lab and the journeys that led them to where they are now. They also discuss the current state of science funding, the established researchers give advice on how to navigate the transition to independence and the early-career scientists reflect on advice they would give to PhD students at the start of their journey. Read the ‘Cell Scientists To Watch’ interviews below and click here to jump to the ‘First Person’ interviews.

Know someone you think we should interview? Email us!
Would you like to be featured in ‘First Person’? Details will be sent to the first author on acceptance of your paper in Journal of Cell Science. Submit your paper here.

Kevin Corbett (University of California, San Diego, USA)

Kevin Corbett works at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research San Diego where he studies homologous chromosome pairing in meiosis I and the contribution of misregulation of meiotic genes to carcinogenesis.

Marvin Tanenbaum (Hubrecht Institute, Utrecht, Netherlands)

Marvin Tanenbaum is a group leader at the Hubrecht Institute in Utrecht. His group aims to understand the dynamics of different aspects of gene expression at the single-molecule level, the kinetics that occur in translation and how it influences important cellular decisions.

Arun Shukla (Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India)

Arun Shukla is a group leader at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur. His research group is interested in the signalling pathways and structural aspects of G-protein-coupled-receptors (GPCRs).

Andrew Holland (Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, USA)

Andrew Holland is a group leader at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He studies the mechanisms regulating copy numbers of centrosomes during cell division and how this is linked to genome instability and tumorigenesis.

Edgar Gomes (Instituto de Medicina Molecular, Lisbon, Portugal)

Edgar Gomes is a group leader at the Instituto de Medicina Molecular in Lisbon where he investigates the mechanisms of nuclear positioning and signal transduction into the nucleus in skeletal muscle and migrating cells.

Megan King (University of Pennsylvania, USA)

Megan King is an Associate Professor for Cell Biology at Yale School of Medicine, and she’s interested in how chromatin dynamics are influenced by their cellular context and the mechanical properties of cells.

Brian Stramer (King’s College London, UK)

Sabine Petry (Princeton University, USA)

Sabine Petry is a group leader at Princeton University where her group investigates the mechanisms by which microtubules build cellular structures to allow cells to attain a particular shape and function.

Celeste Nelson (Princeton University, USA)

Celeste Nelson is a group leader at Princeton University where her group investigates how biochemical and mechanical cues affect individual cells during organ morphogenesis and what happens when organs are destroyed in diseases such as cancer and fibrosis.

Christian Behrends (Frankfurt, Germany)

Christian Behrends is a group leader at the Medical School of Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main. His lab focuses on the basic mechanisms of autophagy, particularly concentrating on the role of ubiquitin signalling, and the crosstalk between autophagy and other vesicular trafficking pathways.

Meritxell Huch (University of Cambridge, UK)

Meritxell Huch is a group leader at the Gurdon Institute, University of Cambridge, UK and a Wellcome Trust Sir Henry Dale Research Fellow. She investigates the mechanisms responsible for adult tissue regeneration in the liver and the pancreas.

Virgile Viasnoff (France/Singapore)

Virgile Viasnoff holds a dual appointment between the CNRS in France and the MBI in Singapore. His lab in Singapore investigates how the physical and biochemical parameters of the cellular microenvironment regulate cell–cell adhesion and cell fate.

Lei (Stanley) Qi (California, USA)

Lei (Stanley) Qi is an Assistant Professor of Bioengineering and Chemical and Systems Biology at Stanford University, California, USA, and a faculty fellow in Stanford ChEM-H. His research focuses on applying genome engineering and CRISPR technologies to genetic interaction networks related to cell differentiation, proliferation, epigenetic regulation and diseases.

Melina Schuh (Göttingen, Germany)

At the time this interview was conducted, Melina Schuh was a group leader at the Medical Research Council – Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK. She is now a Director at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen, Germany. Her research focuses on meiosis in mammalian oocytes.

Julie Welburn (Edinburgh, UK)

Julie Welburn is a group leader at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Cell Biology in Edinburgh. Her laboratory works on microtubules and microtubule motors and their function during cell division and differentiation.

Christine Mayr (New York, USA)

Christine Mayr is an assistant professor at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre and the Weill Cornell Medical School at Cornell University in New York, USA. She investigates how untranslated regions of the mRNA regulate protein function.

José Silva (University of Cambridge, UK)

José Silva is a Senior Group Leader at the Wellcome Trust – Medical research Council Cambridge Stem Cell Institute at the University of Cambridge, UK. He works on nuclear reprogramming and induced pluripotency.

Irene Miguel-Aliaga (Imperial College London, UK)

Irene Miguel-Aliaga is a Programme Leader at the Medical Research Council ­Clinical Sciences Centre and a Reader at Imperial College London, UK. Her research focuses on understanding the biology of gut cells.